I didn't think. I dove through a broken window, the glass crunching under my boots. I sprinted for the rope extraction point, the wind howling as the Tide began to roar like a freight train. My stamina bar was flickering red. My vision was blurring.
I checked my gear. In this version of the world, the shadows felt sharper, the "Mimics" more patient. I slid a fresh magazine into my PM pistol, the metallic clack echoing too loudly in the silence. My mission was simple: retrieve a film canister from the Bolotky Village.
I took off the headset. My room was dark. The clock said 4:15 AM. I looked at the .rar file on my desktop and felt a strange chill. In the Zone, you never really leave. You just wait for the next version of the nightmare to load.